


Queen Administrator's Multiverse Adventures - Remnant

by RavensDagger



Series: How to Train Your Endbringer - Multiverse Adventures [2]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Crossover, Gen, It's a Simurgh Plot, Queen Administrator and Friends Visit Remnant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 11:58:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17849036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensDagger/pseuds/RavensDagger
Summary: In Which a bored Queen Administrator decides to visit Remnant to hug some Grimm and pet the locals.





	1. Chapter 1

Taylor Hebert was bored. This was, some people would say, somewhat dangerous.

She tried shifting in her throne so that her legs were dangling off one side and kicking against the ornate arms made of black stone that protruded from the massive seat. That kept her entertained for all of a minute. When the echoes of her feet’s thump-thumping died down, she shifted back into a proper position and sighed.

“Levi, I’m bored,” she told the massive throne room.

In actuality, she missed her friends. But most of them were out and about, going to school or working or just having fun without her.

She could have gone out and walked the streets or snooped around for some criminals, but every time she did that the PRT got miffed at her, then they’d ask Dragon to tell her to stop stealing the wallets of every mugger in the city, then Dragon would come around and explain why that wasn’t a nice thing to do.

There were few things that made Taylor feel as bad as Dragon’s motherly voice telling her that she was disappointed in her lack of forethought and that she knew that Taylor could do better.

{Unit-02 can Suggests Activities to Eliminate Lack of Amusement. Current List of Available Tasks: 17,3654,753.}

Taylor sighed. “Thanks Levi, but nothing that has to do with killing things.”

{... Unit-02 Requires Time to Process Host-Queen_Administrator’s Request. No Boredom-Killing Tasks Fit Given Parameters.}

Taylor’s face scrunched up. “Well fine, I guess I can wait.”

[Excited. Unit-03 Completed Project. Project will Reduce Boredom.]

Taylor had been spending a fair bit of time around the Simurgh. She was starting to get a good idea of how the Endbringer’s thought process worked. “Does it involve some sort of mental probe?” she asked.

[Shocked! Negative. No Mental Probing.]

Taylor narrowed her eyes. “Does it involve anything else probing me?”

[... Negative. Nothing will Probe Host-Queen_Administrator in the Process of Utilizing new Project Creation.]

“Nothing will probe me, but that doesn’t mean that nothing else will be probed.”

[Host-Queen_Administrator will find New Project System in Sub-Basement 03. Under Room of Relationships.]

Taylor scrunched up her nose, but she started walking off towards the side-doors of her throne room anyway. “I noticed you changing the subject. You’re on thin ice already, young lady!”

{Unit-02 can Improve Thickness of Ice.}

Taylor found that the corridors and passages of her castle were something like a maze. It was very easy to get lost, especially if she focused on where she was going. She had the sneaking suspicion that the corridors shifted around when no one was paying attention. Still, as long as she didn’t pay attention to which turn she took and where she was heading, she always arrived where she wanted in more or less the same amount of time, regardless of how far her destination should have been from her starting point.

She was just thinking on ways of phrasing a sentence in such a way that the Simurgh couldn’t sneak out of it when she heard a voice from deeper in the castle. “Hello? Anyone around? This mousey-mouse needs some breadcrumbs to find her way back!”

Curious, Taylor veered off at the next corridor and soon found herself walking towards Mouse Protector. The heroine was in her full regalia, mouse ears erect, sword by her hip and armour shining in the ever-present light that filled the many halls of the Great Administratorius. “Oh, thank the great ball of cheese in the sky!” she said before rushing towards Taylor. “I was lost, like a pinkie in a maze, and no cheese in sight!”

“Hi Miss Mouse Protector!” Taylor said. “Were you lost for a long time?”

“Not really,” she said while rubbing at the back of her head. “Just a few minutes. I swear I knew how to get back to the throne room from the guest quarters yesterday, but then everything was off this morning.”

“Couldn’t you have teleported?”

“Well, yeah, but only to the Rig or back to my rooms or to your side. Do you know how embarrassing it would be to pop up next to you just because I couldn’t find my way around?” she asked.

‘Ah, I guess that makes sense. So, where were you trying to go?”

Mouse Protector shrugged. “Around, I guess. I was going to check up on you to see what you were up to.”

“In that case, follow me!” Taylor said. “I was just going to visit Simmy in the basement. She’s got this thing that’s supposed to be fun.”

“Why is it that when you say ‘fun’ I hear ‘pants-wettingly terrifying?’”

Taylor rolled her eyes. “C’mon, when’s the last time I purposely did something to scare people? It’s been... at least a few days.”

She could almost feel Mouse Protector’s incredulous look following her as she made her way deeper into the castle. They came to a spiralling staircase and started to make their way down to the basement.

A few short minutes later and Taylor found herself in one of the dungeons. The walls were made of the same crystalline material, but these were darker, the corridors lit by smoky torches hanging in brackets set just far enough apart that they left long stretches of shadow that bisected the corridor every few meters.

She felt Mouse Protector standing a little closer behind her as she reached a single large door marked with a circle of what might have been blood.

“I think this is the one,” Taylor said.

“Uh,” said Mouse Protector.

Turning the knob, Taylor pushed her way into the room, then paused.

There were quite a few things that immediately tried to grab her attention. It was hard to choose which one to focus on first. Should she stare at the two car seats in the middle of a circle inscribed in blood on the floor? Should she look at the lone goat standing in yet another circle a little ways off? Maybe the book floating an inch off a stone pedestal, its pages cracking and flipping back and forth with a sound not unlike the cackle of an old man?

She looked past all that and towards Unit-02 who was laying on the ground in his favourite sleeping pose, his tail thumping soundlessly on the ground. “Hey, Levi, where’s Simmy?”

The Endbringer opened one of his four eyes, then made an almost lazy motion towards the ceiling.

The Simurgh descended like an avenging angel cosplaying as Alexandria.

She had forgone her usual costume for a white and grey skintight suit with an armoured visor and bits of what might have been Tinkertech plating around her chest and hips. It looked like something out of a video game and Taylor didn’t quite know what to think about her friend’s new look.

“Hey Simmy. What’s going on?”

[Excited. Predicted boredom of Host-Queen_Administrator. Created Portal Mechanism to Deter Boredom.]

“Uh huh.”

[Encouraging. Sit in Chairs. Avoid Touching Organic Blood Samples.]

Taylor surveyed the room again, taking in the arcane symbols that glowed faintly with a malevolent light and the way the shadows stared back at her. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

The Simurgh made a dismissive motion with one hand. [Scoffing. Abyss Stared back. Unit-03 Stared Harder. No need for Fear. Predicted High Likelihood of Survival. Bring Bags of Important Objects.] With another negligent wave of her hand, the Simurgh made a cargo bag float off the ground from where it was hidden behind the pedestal and towards Taylor who caught it one-handed.

Shrugging, Taylor reached back, grabbed Mouse Protector’s hand, and moved towards the two car seats. “C’mon. This might be fun.”

“Baa!” agreed one of the goats.

[Smug. Suggest Closing eyes and Tightening Loose Orifices.]

***

This. Was. Awesome!

Okay, sure, she wasn’t expecting the whole ‘exploding launch platform’ thing. And yeah, maybe that was a little dangerous and all. But still, this was what Ruby was made for!

She was a year or two younger than all the others taking the initiation test, but that was okay. She was a growing girl, she drank her milk, she would be fine! Now, all she needed to do was find Yang and rush to the end of the forest.

Easy-peasy.

Her boots dug into the bark of passing trees as she shot from one branch to the next, Crescent Rose held close to her side and spinning every few moments to avoid getting caught in the overhanging branches.

She spotted a blur of black out of the corner of her eye, a snout and long neck with a flash of white.

With a spin that would make most gymnasts green with envy, she changed directions.

Her baby scythed around, steel glinting in the morning sunlight as it curved up and around, taking the head off a Beowolf with a motion so clean that she hardly felt any resistance at all.

Ruby spun Crescent Rose around while her feet dug furrows into the loamy ground of the forest leaving a pair of trenches out behind her before she came to a full stop. She paused, ears perked and eyes scanning the woods for any sign of additional Grimm.

The beheaded Beowolf started to fade, bits of its tough flesh evaporating into the morning air as flecks of darkness.

She grinned. Her breathing was coming in sharp and fast, but not too hard. She hadn’t even broken a sweat yet but she still felt as though she’d just come off a runner’s high.

“Now, if I were a Yang, where would I be hiding?” she asked.

Turning back towards the deeper forest, Ruby took off at a jog. There was no point in rushing if it meant missing her chance at finding her sister and becoming her partner. No, she had to be very careful and pay plenty of attention.

Someone screamed.

It was a girl’s voice, somewhere between panic and fearful, the kind of scream that meant that someone was in trouble.

It was also, she was certain, not Yang’s voice. Ruby wrestled with the idea of not saving the girl for just the teeny-tiniest of seconds. In the end though, it was against her very nature not to help someone in need.

And if that meant having someone other than her sister as a partner... then so be it.

Resolve as firm as it would ever be, Ruby raced forwards.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” the voice said. It was closer now, she was almost at it.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. And, um, it doesn't look that bad?” another voice said.

Ruby’s grin grew. There was someone else there! Maybe she would be partnered with Yang after all.

She burst into a clearing, scythe held loosely by her side as she took in the scene with a trained eye.

A young girl, maybe Yang’s age, was standing next to a slumped-over beowolf. The Grimm’s eyes were crossed and its tongue was sticking out of the side of its mouth. Clearly she had subdued the monster already.

Another woman was nearby, her face hidden under a strange mask with a pair of armoured ears sticking out of the top. A mouse faunus, maybe?

The kneeling girl stood up and the hundreds of tassels that made up her battle dress flowed around her. Keen eyes took in Ruby from behind a cloth mask.

“Are you okay?” Ruby asked as she slowed down. Crescent Rose came to a rest by her side, the end hovering an inch off the ground. The mouse faunus was tense, but she didn’t pull out the sword hanging by her hip. Ruby didn’t recognize either girl from the initiation launch, but other than a few noteworthy faces the rest of the participants might as well have been black cutouts for all the attention she had paid them.

“We’re okay, but, um, was that your dog?” the tasseled girl asked. She pointed at the downed Beowolf, then brought her hands up to her chest where her fingers intertwined under her bust.

“Uh,” Ruby said. “No?”

“Oh, shucks. Okay... do you know the number of a good vet?”

“A vet? Like, for pets?” Ruby asked.

The girl nodded. “I didn’t mean to hurt the puppy, I swear. I just landed on him by accident.”

Ruby had the impression that her initiation had just gotten a lot more complicated.


	2. Chapter 2

Ruby didn’t know what to think of the girl calling herself Queen Administrator.

For one, even if Ruby wasn’t all that well travelled and spent more time reading books on the origins of weapons than on the cultures of Remnant, she thought she would remember a place where a girl only a few years her senior was queen. Especially a girl whose name was Administrator.

For two, Administrator didn’t seem to recognize the Grimm as a threat. That could either mean that she was really, really sheltered. Like, more than her even, or that she was so strong that they didn’t matter.

For three, Ruby had never seen anyone try to coax a Beowolf back to health with pats on the head and encouragements to drink whiskey. Why the mouse faunus was carrying a flask-full of whiskey didn’t even blip Ruby’s weirdness radar.

Fortunately the Beowolf passed on, its body turning into smoky black dust that was carried away with a passing wind. Both of Ruby’s new... friends seemed rather taken aback by that, but Ruby tried to assure them that it was perfectly normal.

That’s when Ruby ran into a bit of a snag.

“So... uh,” Ruby said. “Did you guys know where to go next?” It wasn’t an entirely selfless question. She kinda knew where the ruins were, but figured that making her way through the Emerald Forest would be easier with two other huntresses-in-training.

“I don’t even know where I am right now,” the mouse faunus admitted.

“Where are we?” Queen Administrator tilted her head to one side, then bit the tip of her tongue. Her arm shot off, pointing off in a seemingly random direction. “That way!”

“Did you use a Semblance?” Ruby asked. She took one more look around and folded Crescent Rose into its compact form. The surprised expression on her two new companions’ faces warmed her heart, but it wasn’t time to introduce them to her baby.

“A Semblance?” the faunus asked.

“Yeah, you know, like, uh.” Ruby blinked, then, with a careless shrug, she bolted from one end of the little clearing to the other in the time it would take most people to blink twice. A wash of rose petals fluttered in the air where she passed.

“Oh, a power!” Administrator said. She seemed suitably impressed by Ruby’s speed. “Yeah, I used mine to tell where to go... kinda.” She frowned a little. “Not really my power, but a sort of... side effect of it.”

Ruby nodded. That was pretty common. Her own Semblance made it so that she had time to react while moving faster and Yang’s eyes turned red. It wouldn’t be beyond imagining that Administrator’s Semblance also gave her a good sense of direction. “Cool. I was looking for my sister. N-not that she has to be my partner, of course.”

“Partner?” the mouse faunus asked. Fortunately, they all started walking in the direction Administrator had pointed them to. Ruby didn’t want to press them to start moving, but she was a bit worried that they would be left behind.

What if she didn’t find Yang in time? Worse, what if she was so late in getting to the ruins that there was literally no one left to be her partner? Then she’d be kicked out of Beacon forever. Or made to be on a team all on her own with no partner to help her for the next four years.

She took a deep calming breath. “Weren’t you listening to the headmaster?”

“Nope,” Administrator said.

“Oh. Well, the first person whose eyes you meet will be your partner. I’m hoping to find Yang. That’s my sister.”

“Mousey, does that mean we’re partners now?” the taller girl said a moment before throwing herself onto her faunus friend.

The faunus had a look that Ruby recognized from Yang. A look Yang wore just before Ruby’s day took a turn for the embarassing. A half second before Administrator was about to glomp her she popped out of existence and appeared a dozen feet back.

The queen landed on the ground with an undignified squawk.

Ruby was beginning to think that her new friends were on the strange side.

***

Blake Belladonna was going to die.

This was stupid because she knew that she was a good fighter, that she was better than half the students that had been launched into the forest and that she should have known better than to run into the kind of situation that would lead to her death.

But no, she just had to sneak by everyone she met in the forest.

She had almost, almost stepped out of the brush when she crossed paths with a tall, rather pretty blonde-haired girl. Then the girl started muttering about getting branches in her hair of all things and Blake decided to take her chances elsewhere.

Elsewhere turned out to be in the path of a raging horde of Ursai.

She spun, dodging by inches the swipe of a paw that could have crushed her had it hit. She used the momentum of her spin to duck another blow, then pushed off the Ursa’s tough hide to move away from the Grimm while bringing up Gambol Shroud. With two squeezes of the trigger she managed to plant a pair of rounds into the Grimm’s face.

The monster roared, massive teeth gleaming as spittle flew out of its gaping maw.

Blake hopped back to make room between herself and the lead Grimm. She could take it, no problem. She was faster and while she didn’t hit as hard as the massive Grimm, she was able to do some damage. The problem was the three other Ursa waiting behind the first and slowly circling around.

Maybe if she made enough noise someone would show up?

Blake lowered herself a little, getting ready to rush the Grimm as soon as it moved. Her aura was still strong. It was a matter of endurance and not getting injured.

It wasn’t going to be easy, but there was a chance that she would survive. Maybe.

Just as she started to move, a white blur crashed into the ground amidst the Grimm.

Dirt and branches flew up into the air, kicked up by a gust of wind strong enough that she had to cover her eyes with an arm until it died down. When she looked past her arm it was to find the four Grimm floating in the air and clawing at their throats. In the middle of them was a tall, shapely woman dressed entirely in white.

Her gaze met a pair of white eyes that crinkled in the corners with pleasure.

The figure made a dismissive gesture. Four necks snapped.

***

Yang was having a pretty good time with this whole initiation thing. Sure, she’d gotten some twigs stuck in her perfect hair upon landing, but that wasn’t too bad. She just had to kill the tree and the score was settled.

That was a few minutes ago. Since then her only problem was a small group of Beowolves (easily dispatched) and a lot of walking in the rough direction of the ruins.

That was, until she found her latest and perhaps strangest problem.

There was a bed in the Emerald Forest.

A pretty enough bed, with a nice quilt on it, a nightstand off to one side and a few giant cushions shaped like, if she wasn’t mistaken, cherries.

It was a perfectly good, normal, (inviting even) queen-sized bed.

A bed in the middle of a forest. An occupied bed.

Yang looked around, searching for the cameras that would reveal this as some sort of prank. Maybe, she thought, this was part of the initiation test.

Walking slowly up to the bed, Yang stood a little taller to peek at the round face slumbering peacefully under a pile of fluffy blankets.

She waited for a few long seconds to see if someone was going to shout ‘gotcha’ from behind one of the trees. Nothing happened except for a few muffled snores from the little girl that were, frankly, kinda cute.

“Okay, well, this isn’t exactly eye contact, sleeping beauty, but it’s close enough for me.”

***

This was, as far as Weiss Schnee, Heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, was concerned, an attempt to prove that incompetence could be found at every level of society.

Also, she was getting her boots all muddy.

“We’re almost at the temple!” the oaf, Jaune Arc, screamed in a voice that was so shrill as to be mistaken for a woman’s.

“Yes, I think we noticed,” she shot back. How the oaf managed to end up with Pyrrha Nikos as a partner was beyond her. Of course, the blame could be laid squarely at the feet of those responsible for this farce of an initiation test.

What kind of brain-addled nitwit thought that tossing them all in a forest, a dirty, Grimm-filled forest, was a good idea?

“This is fun!” the buxom girl with the massive hammer and massive-r chest screamed. Her partner, a silent, dependable young man just shook his head. She pitied the man.

The five of them got a second wind when the Death Stalker chasing them stabbed the ground with its stinger. Seeing a barb the size of a fridge ram into the ground just feet away from them had the encouraging benefit of providing the push they needed to run a little faster.

“Look, more people!” Arc said while pointing forwards with his sword. She had seen him swinging that sword earlier. So far using it as a pointing stick was the best use he’d put the thing to. To be fair, he was right, there were three people ahead of them. She recognized the little girl in the red dress as the dimwit that had bumbled into her luggage the day prior.

“Oh man, run!” Arc screamed at the new group.

Two of them did as he said and spun on their heels to race towards the cover provided by the ruins. The third just stared past them and towards the Death Stalker. There was something in her eyes. A glimmer of what might have been madness or lust. Weiss didn’t have the time or inclination to dissect the girl’s expression because she was too busy running past and jumping over one of the fallen pillars of the ruin.

She spun around and tore Myrtenaster from her hip. The others, similarly, got ready to fight the approaching Grimm.

All but the lone girl standing before the monster in tattered clothes.

The Grimm slowed to a halt, each footfall sending trembles through the ground as the massive scorpion stopped a few meters away from the girl.

“Q-queen Administrator!” the girl in the red dress screamed with some amount of despair. Weiss could sympathise. She was about to watch her friend get chopped up by an elder Grimm.

“Hrm, what’s wrong, Ruby?” the girl shouted back.

Weiss stared at her. Was she daft or did she have some sort of plan or ability that would keep her safe?

The Grimm didn’t seem to know what to do with her either. Weiss had heard of hunters and huntresses with so little fear in them that they gave the Grimm pause, but those were just stories.

With a shrug, the girl turned back to the elder Grimm and spread her arms out to either side. “Hi, I’m Queen Administrator and I want to give you a hug.”

Daft. Definitely daft.

Weiss couldn’t keep her eyes off the girl. Pyrrha was already over the fallen pillar and rushing toward her, but she was too far.

The Grimm’s stinger struck.

There was a meaty smack. The sound echoed across the clearing around the ruins.

A creature stood between the self-proclaimed Queen Administrator and the Death Stalker. A dozen paces tall with skin of a dark green and covered with fine scales. Water seemed to be slowly dripping off the massive beast that held the Death Stalker’s stinger in one hand the way someone might a wine glass.

The girl sighed. “I guess it doesn’t want to be friends. Maybe Ruby was right,” the girl said.

The Death Stalker tried to lash out with one of its claws only for a tendril of water to come bursting out of the ground. It wrapped around the clawed appendage and stopped it inches away from the girl’s head.

“Leviathan, could you genocide this poor monster, please?”

The creature, Leviathan, which as far as Weiss was concerned was a very suitable name, nodded once.

The Death Stalker exploded.

***

There was a bit of a crowd around the stage where those that had passed the initiation were gathered. That was fair, as far as Ruby was concerned. Being assigned to a team was a Big Deal, and that sort of life-changing event deserved the kind of attention that they were gathering.

The headmaster stood next to the scary Deputy Headmistress, occasionally sipping at his coffee between calling out names of people who would gather on stage and be given a team name. It was a lot more relaxed than Ruby would have imagined, but after the day she’d had she was appreciating the calm.

“Jaune Arc, Lie Ren, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie. The four of you retrieved the White Rook pieces. From this day forwards you will work together as team Juniper. Led by... Jaune Arc.”

Jaune looked a little under the weather after that announcement. Ruby clapped along with the rest though, it wouldn’t do not to support the other hunters and huntresses in training.

She saw Yang a little ways ahead of her next to a girl in... Ruby blinked. Was the girl next to Yang wearing pyjamas?

Before she had time to nip over to Yang’s side to ask, the headmaster called out another list of names. “Yang Xiao-Long, Neo Politan, Blake Belladonna, Simurgh The.” Ozpin paused to let the four of them gather on stage. That’s about when the tittering and whispers started.

Yang stood next to a girl with pink and brown hair that must have been half a head shorter than Ruby (squee!). That same girl was blinking around with a look of utter bafflement before covering her mouth to hide a jaw-breaking yawn.

Those two looked kind of strange next to each other, but it was the other pair that really caused a stir.

One was a very pretty girl in a black and white outfit with a complex gun-sword hybrid at her hip. Some sort of variant ballistic chain weapon if Ruby had to guess. She was pretty normal, though she looked a little shell-shocked.

The other girl was the issue.

“Um, I’m terribly sorry if my request seems a little rude,” the headmaster began, “But what... exactly are you, Miss Simurgh?”

The fifteen-foot tall girl gestured at her breast, then pointed at the headmaster’s coat. After a few repetitions the man reached into his jacket’s breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “An... angel faunus...” He took a long drag of his coffee. “Of course, that makes perfect sense.”

Miss Goodwitch didn’t seem to agree, but before she could say anything the headmaster cleared his throat and went on. “Together you gathered the White Pawn chess pieces. You will, from now on, be team B-N-Y-S or Bunnys. Led by Miss Neo Politan.”

There was a scattering of applause which Ruby joined.

That made the Neo girl start and stare around. She had kinda fallen asleep with her head against Yang’s shoulder.

That angel faunus seemed a little strange, but at least she looked like she was in a good mood. The black-haired girl next to her looked like she was having kittens for some reason.

“We’re next,” Weiss said. “Now, walk with your back straight and don’t make a fuss.”

Ruby suppressed a sigh, if only because that would make things worse.

“Queen Administrator, Weiss Schnee, Ruby Rose and Mouse Protector,” the headmaster called.

Ruby zipped over to her place on the stage and heard a faint pop before Mouse Protector appeared right by her side. She had to hold back a grin when she heard Weiss’ irritated huff.

“You gathered the White Queen chess pieces. Together, you will be known as team S-P-A-R or Spear, led by Weiss Schnee.”

The headmaster looked over the four girls and nodded to himself. “Looks like things are shaping up to be... interesting.”


	3. Chapter 3

“So, what is a hunter, anyway?”

Weiss was... if she were to be honest with herself, used to a certain level of comfort in life. Her trainers and tutors had always been professionals and the people she met in her day to day life were either subservient or the sorts of people used to mingling at her level of society.

She knew that entering Beacon would be something of an experience. After all, no normal Beacon student had staff ready and willing to cater to their every need. She knew that she would have to be self-sufficient, that maybe her team wouldn’t be perfect and that she might have to carry the weight of others in order to make them the best hunters ever.

She wasn’t expecting things to be quite this bad.

“Hunters,” she started to explain with an amount of patience that surprised even her, “are the defenders of humanity... and Faunuskind.” The last she added when she noticed her other teammate skipping along next to Ruby. It wouldn’t do to let her think that she was racist.

“So,” the so called Queen Administrator continued, “they’re basically superheroes?”

“No, they are governmentally backed, trained warriors given the incredibly important task of keeping the peace and protecting those who can’t protect themselves,” Weiss explained.

“Yeah, they’re pretty much superheroes,” Ruby said.

The four members of team SPAR were making their way towards their room. Queen Administrator was in the lead, with Weiss walking right next to the long-legged girl while Ruby and Mouse Protector (and where did those two come from to have such strange names?) took up the rear.

“So, this place trains superheroes. That’s really cool. Is the headmaster able to read minds?”

“I... no, Professor Ozpin is not able to read minds,” Weiss said.

“Oh, that’s disappointing. Wait, is he actually super old and has a thing for sherbert lemons?”

Weiss did not sigh. That would be unlady-like. “No, he is neither very old, nor, as far as I’m aware, does he have any special regard for lemon candies.”

“Huh,” Queen Administrator said. She turned and stopped right in front of a door that Weiss would have just ignored in any other circumstances. With a quick motion, the girl swung the door open and made to take a step into the room when she paused.

The rest of the team stopped too.

A broom, some buckets and a few boxes of cleaning supplies stared back. That, and two students of Beacon currently in states of undress.

“Oh, wow, you have bunny ears,” Queen Administrator said to one of the topless girls.

“C-Coco, close the door!” the bunny faunus squeaked.

Queen Administrator obliged them by swinging the broom closet door shut. “You know, I’m getting way too used to living with Simmy if I just expect every random door to lead me where I need to go,” she mused.

Weiss, whose face felt a little on the warm side, twitched.

***

Yang Xiao-Long stared at her partner. Neo stared back.

This had been going on for perhaps ten minutes now, basically ever since they found their way into their dorm rooms. The fact that one of them was still in her pyjamas even though the sun was due to set any minute now didn’t really matter.

Yang knew that she had other things to do, like making sure that Ruby was okay, but this might be her priority.

“So, uh, I’m Yang,” she finally said.

Neo didn’t reply.

“And you’re Neo! Pleased to meetcha Neo,” Yang said with obviously false cheer.

One of Neo’s eyes twitched.

Yang slumped in her bed a little. This wasn’t going as well as she’d imagined. “Look, I don’t know why you’re not talking to me,” she said while ignoring the renewed twitching from her partner. “But we’re stuck together for the next four years, so let’s make the best of it, yeah? I’m Yang.” She extended a calloused hand towards the girl. “I like drinking, partying, my hair, and my adorable little sister. I like problems that can be fixed by punching them hard enough or by talking it over during lunch. I’m here because I want to be the best huntress ever so I can go on adventures and there’s a certain woman whose ass I want to kick.”

Neo tilted her head to one side and Yang had the impression that she was being judged by the girl’s mismatched eyes. She lifted one hand and pointed to her mouth, then made an X sign with two index fingers.

“You can’t talk?”

Neo nodded.

“Oh, well... and here I thought you were just shy, or sleepy. But that’s okay! I can talk enough for two! Ruby keeps moaning about that.”

Neo’s eyes rolled but Yang had the impression that she had found that amusing.

“Cool. So, uh, want to go to the cafeteria and see if they have ice cream or booze or something?”

Neo’s grin was answer enough.

***

“We have to talk,” Blake told her partner.

The so called ‘angel faunus’ nodded solemnly, a tiny smile twisting her lips. She made a sweeping gesture with both arms, as if encouraging Blake to move deeper into the school.

She considered it for a moment, but gave in. It wouldn’t hurt to at least be polite to the girl that had, to some degree, saved her skin during initiation. So she started walking deeper into Beacon. The school was beautiful, decorated with fountains and busts of famous hunters placed in the intersections of wide corridors, and the architecture was the sort you'd expect to see in a pamphlet.

Students, either in the school uniform or in hunter gear, walked around in twos or threes, the low murmur of their voices echoing throughout the institute.

It was everything she had dreamed of.

Her partner floated an inch off the ground, casually defying physics in a way that made her hackles raise. “Okay, first of all... can you not float like that? People are staring!” she hissed.

With a shrug Simurgh dropped onto the balls of her feet and started strutting next to Blake with the kind of casual grace reserved for dancers and hunters of the highest caliber. Each slow stride of her long legs was enough to cover three of Blake’s stomping steps.

Blake grit her teeth. Closing her eyes for a moment, she tried to rationalise her irritation.

Her hopes and dreams in joining Beacon were pretty simple: keep her head down, become a good hunter and a productive member of society. And if she could do something to help the Faunus at some point, that would be nice.

So having someone so... attention-grabbing as a partner was a little counter to her plans. But she knew that wasn’t her partner’s fault. Simurgh, or whatever her name actually was, didn’t ask to be Blake’s partner. It was hardly fair that she take it out on the girl.

Even if she was a little strange.

“I’m sorry,” Blake said. The words hurt a little on the way out, but she felt better for having said them. “I haven’t been the best partner and it hasn’t been more than a few hours. I... hope we can become good friends.”

Simurgh’s smile was dazzling. She reached out a hand that was big enough to grab Blake’s entire head and waited with it hovering before Blake. After just a moment’s hesitation Blake took the hand and shook.

“So... I don’t want to offend you right after we agreed to work together, but you’re mute, right?”

Simurgh made a so-so gesture with her hand, then pointed at Blake’s pocket.

The cat faunus slowly looked down to see a bit of a bulge in her vest. She pulled open the small pocket and discovered a notepad stuffed inside.

CAN SING. CANNOT SPEAK read the first page of the notepad.

Blake paused for a few long seconds, then looked up to her partner who wore a look of perfect innocence. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Simurgh at the notepad, then made a flipping gesture. Blake caught on soon enough and turned the page. MAKES PERFECT SENSE IN CONTEXT. BLAKE BELLADONNA LACKS CONTEXT. LIBRARY?

Blake looked up from the pad to see Simurgh pointing off to one side where a pair of opened double doors revealed a room filled with shelves and workspaces. Beacon’s library was supposed to be one of the greatest resources for hunter-based knowledge in the world and had been a definite selling point to Blake.

“Fine,” she grumbled as she started to walk into the large room. “How are you doing this anyway?” She gestured with the notepad.

Simurgh only had to start making the motion of changing pages before Blake caught on and turned to the next page in the notepad. YOU ARE PREDICTABLE. Blake felt her ears twitching under her bow.

“I am not,” she shot back. Was Simurgh trying to get under her skin or was she just trying for friendly banter? Either way, it didn’t explain how she was doing what she was doing with the notepad. Or, for that matter, how she was floating, or what an ‘angel faunus’ was. The more she looked at her new partner the more questions came up and the more it bugged her that no one else was clueing in to the fact that nothing made sense.

Blake glared at Simurgh for a few moments, then rolled her eyes and turned the page in the notepad. She pretended not to notice the growing smile on the Simurgh’s face as she looked down. YES YOU ARE.

Blake had to restrain herself from flinging the notepad across the room. Instead she found a nice worktable in one corner of the library, pulled up a seat, and sat down. Simurgh waved her hands and the seats across from hers floated off to be stacked neatly in a far-off corner. The huge girl sat, cross-legged, on the ground across from Blake. She was still a head taller than the cat faunus.

“Okay. I know we haven’t been together for long, but I think I deserve an explanation. How are you doing... all of that?”

In lieu of answering, Simurgh reached under the table, then came up with two tall cups made of clear glass. She placed them both on the table, then reached under again and pulled out a jug with a strange logo on the side. PRT Special-Issue Skim-Milk was printed in blocky letters on the opposite side.

Blake watched her pull the top off the jug and fill the two glasses until they were brimming with milk. Her nose twitched at the faint scent.

One glass slid across the table and stopped right in front of Blake.

Blake narrowed her eyes and stared at Simurgh for a few long seconds. “You know,” she said.

The woman pointed at the notepad still clutched in Blake’s hands. I KNOW EVERYTHING, the next page in the pad read.

Blake growled under her breath before trying to calm herself. She flipped over to the next page, then the next and the next. They were each completely blank. With a huff, she grabbed the glass of milk, sniffed it, then took an experimental sip.

It was pretty good.

“How did you know?” Blake asked as she slammed the cup back onto the table.

Simurgh’s smile grew and she gestured at the notepad again. The next page now had a few lines of text on it. KNOW EVERYTHING. JUST HERE TO HAVE FUN. CONTINUE LATER. GUESTS ARRIVING.

“Guests?” Blake said, but before she could really say much a multicoloured blur slammed into her partner’s side.

“Simmy!” the girl said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I need your help.” The girl paused, then noticed Blake sitting on the other side of the table. “Oh, Simmy, is this your partner? Hi! I’m Queen Administrator, pleased to meet you!”

“Blake,” Blake said. “Blake Belladonna. It’s nice to meet you too. You know Simurgh?”

“Yeah, we’re best buds!” the girl said. She turned and pointed behind her to an older girl whose face was partially covered by a mask that allowed room for what must have been her faunus ears. It was an admittedly clever piece of design work. It showed off her faunus heritage while protecting what might have been a weakness. “That’s Mouse Protector, she’s been with me for a few days now.”

“Hello, Miss Belladonna,” the mouse faunus said.

Blake didn’t believe for a second that that was her real name, but she wasn’t going to start throwing rocks from her glass house. “Hello,” she replied.

“And that’s Ruby and Weiss,” Queen Administrator went on to point at two other girls that Blake vaguely recognized from the day before. She had seen images of the Schnee heiress before, though she never looked quite as surly in her PR images as she did now.

Blake waved at the group. “Um, hi, I’m Blake, this is my partner Simurgh.”

“Oh, the angel faunus!” Ruby said as she waved at the flying woman that had moved around to stand next to Blake.

Blake tried to suppress a twitch. She gave up when a huge white hand patted Ruby’s head.

“Simmy, we found our room, it’s really cool. But uh, it’s too small. Levi won’t fit.”

Simurgh brought her hand around and held it under her chin in a thinker’s pose. She slowly nodded then made a gesture with both hands as if making something bigger.

“Yeah, I was hoping you could help. Ruby suggested bunk beds, which would be totally cool too, but it still wouldn’t be enough room. Oh, and Mousie and I need more clothes. We didn’t pack enough.”

Simurgh nodded, then pointed at Blake’s notepad again. Blake, having gotten used to the somewhat off way of communicating, turned to the next page and read it aloud. “Shopping?”

“That’s a great idea, Blake!” Queen Administrator said. “We can all go shopping together, and we can get to know each other at the same time.”

“My sister’s on Blake’s team,” Ruby piped up. “Yang, that is. She loves shopping, and if she comes too you can all meet her.”

The Schnee girl looked just as terrified as Blake. She didn’t know what she wanted to do more--scream or beat her head into the table until life started making sense again.

***

Ozpin brought his mug up until the lip of it rested near his chin and took a deep breath through his nose. The invigorating scent of hot chocolate, made with real dark chocolate mixed with cream and milk, sent an invigorating shiver down his spine.

His office, located near the top of one of Beacon’s towers, gave him a beautiful view of the school and the Emerald Forest just beyond it. From the other side of the room he could see Vale. Even so late at night the city was resplendent with colour as cars and the few Bullheads still in the sky drove and flew around. The commercial district was filled with neon flashes that gave life to the walled-off city.

But tonight he wanted the quiet and somber appearance of the forest to greet him. He had a lot to think about.

His desk buzzed, a familiar if dreaded sound that announced that his presence, knowledge or political know-how was needed. He hoped that it was just a few more students caught doing something immature again. Those were always the easiest problems to solve.

He abandoned his position by the window and walked to the desk, almost absently accepting the call before he sat. “Ozpin speaking,” he said.

A small screen unfolded itself from his desk and a familiar visage filled it. “Hello Ozpin,” a gravelly voice replied.

General James Ironwood was, perhaps, one of Ozpin’s greatest allies in the war against the Grimm. Ozpin tried to recall what time it was in Atlas at that moment. They were, after all, half a world away. “How can I help you, James?”

The General looked into the screen with something like exasperation on his features. “Death Stalkers.”

Ozpin blinked once, then took a sip of his hot cocoa. “Go on.”

“Every Death Stalker on the field... exploded. At roughly the same time. I’ve got reports from three dozen sources. And I trust at least half of them.”

“I... see,” Ozpin said. He leaned back into his chair for a moment and let his mind wander back to the events of the day. “I think, General, that I might have an inkling of what is going on.”


	4. Chapter 4

To say that Yang was excited would be an understatement.

Yang’s life, her happiness and her pride hinged on a few things: she wanted to go on adventures, to see the world, and for her sister to be happy.

So, when she was greeted by a grinning Ruby in the morning before classes started, she knew that things were going to be alright.

From the babble Ruby fired her way Yang learned that team SPAR was the Best Team Ever, that she had made Totally Cool New Friends and that she was mildly disappointed that her teammates’ weapons were either mundane or non-existent. Her partner, the surly white-haired girl, was the only one with an Awesome-Cool weapon in the form of a Multi Action Dust Rapier.

Yang had nodded along, her smile only growing as Ruby gushed about her new team. She knew that they would eventually be at odds and that there might be some arguing (because locking four teenage girls in one room was a recipe for disaster at the best of times), but for now it was good to see her little sister making her mark.

If only her own team was the same.

That wasn’t to say that they were bad. In fact she tried to get along with all of them. The problem was that her own partner and team leader was mute, the angel-faunus, Simurgh, was also mute, and Blake was so quiet as to be mute too.

Their dorm room was so quiet that Yang felt like she was going to explode, and it had only been one day.

When the last class of the day ended and they shuffled out of World History, Yang had to practically carry her team leader out of the room. Neo had taken to sleeping through every class, much to Yang’s amusement and the disappointment of every teacher so far. She wondered if Neo would sleep through combat class?

As she and her team exited the day’s last class (Simurgh having to fly out at an angle to fit through the door) they were accosted by a wide-eyed Ruby. “Yang!” the cutest sister in the world said. “Taylor and Mouse need clothes. We’re going to Vale!”

Yang perked up one eyebrow and looked past Ruby (a feat made easy thanks to just how small the girl was) and to her teammates. Queen Administrator was talking to Weiss while gesturing wildly and the mouse faunus was trying not to laugh behind the Schnee heiress.

“Which one’s Taylor?” Yang asked.

“Queen Administrator,” Ruby said. “It’s so cool. Where they’re from they pick their own names, usually stuff that matches their semblance. And they wear masks and stuff to hide their identities. And they fight crime and monsters and things. Isn’t that awesome?”

“Uh-huh,” Yang said. “And her real name is Taylor?”

“Yup.”

“Well, if she’s a Taylor, why doesn’t she tailor her own clothes?”

There was a long beat of silence in the corridor as the two teams took in that masterfull bit of wordplay. Then Neo and Mouse Protector both snorted.

“Yang, no!”

“Yang, yes!” Yang replied while ruffling her sister’s hair.

Ruby was suddenly a dozen paces away, rose petals falling on the ground between them. She started to fix her hair while glowering at Yang. “You wouldn’t be laughing if I messed up your hair, Yang.” Ruby growled in a way that might have been able to threaten a particularly cowardly kitten.

Yang’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, so it’s come to this, huh sis. You’ve flown the nest and all of a sudden you think you can mess with my hair.” Yang balled a hand into a fist and made each knuckle crack. “Bring it on.”

“Hey, hey,” the mouse faunus in Ruby’s team stepped forwards and placed herself between the sisters. “C’mon guys, there’s no need for any of that. We should all be friends. Especially since both our teams have family or, uh,” she paused to stare at Simurgh, “friends on the other team.”

Blake placed a hand on Yang’s shoulder. Did she think Yang would actually do anything to Ruby? Well, anything beyond tickling her into submission? “Fine,” she said. “I was just trying to make the world a punnier place.”

The collective groan made Yang’s heart ring with pure ecstasy. “And here I was going to invite you to go shopping with us,” Ruby said.

Neo’s eyes went wide and she skipped forwards to point at Ruby, then back at herself. “Neo, you want to go with her?” Yang asked. Neo nodded. “Well, if the team leader says so...”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to come if it’s under duress,” the mouse faunus said. “I don’t want you to get... Yang-xious. After all we might be gone for a Long time.”

“Oh no,” Ruby whispered just loud enough that Yang caught it.

Yang’s face twisted into a shit-eating grin. The mouse faunus had no idea what she’d started. “Fine, I’ll come along. But if we’re going to be heading out now we’ll have to stop for dinner somewhere.”

The mouse faunus tilted her head to one side. “Are you going to make a cheese pun? Come on, hit me with your best shot. Don’t leave me Yanging.”

“Oh no,” Ruby’s whisper definitely sounded a little squeaky this time.

“Hey, hey, no need for that,” Yang said as she walked closer to Mouse Protector. “Heck, I’ll even pay for your meal. I wouldn’t want you to be eaten out of mouse and home. I know a good place to grab a bite.” She leaned right into the mouse faunus’ face. “You’ll find it mouse watering.”

Taylor patted Ruby’s back when she started crying. “Mouse, stop. You don’t need to be the Yin to their Yang.”

Yang had the impression that her time at Beacon was going to be very productive.

***

Neo took a moment to reflect on just how... weird things had been in the last twenty odd hours.

Waking up while being carried by some blonde bimbo in a forest was a new one. That same bimbo going on about them being partners was, to some degree, somewhat worrying.

Being told a few minutes later that she had just participated in, and passed, the Beacon Initiation exam was....

She didn’t actually know how to feel about that.

On the one hand Roman was going to laugh at her.

On the other, she was now the proud leader of team Bunnys and had to do her best to help them grow into the best darn hunters ever.

She planned on ditching the lot of them as soon as they made landfall near Vale.

In the meantime, she found herself walking towards the Bullhead docks with her partner, the blonde bimbo, and the nerd team. The angel faunus and the cat had stayed in their dorms because they, at least, knew better than to hang out with a bunch of excitable geeks.

The white-haired dweeb, Weiss Schnee, sidled up next to Neo. The girl obviously didn’t know about personal space. As far as Neo was concerned, anywhere she could reach was her bubble and the bint had just firmly planted herself within it. “So, Miss... Politain, was it? How do you feel about being a team leader so far?”

Neo shrugged.

“Ah, you don’t know what to think about it yet. That’s fair. I suppose you weren't expecting the role. Still, I think you’ll have an easier time of it than I. Your team seems more... level-headed.”

Neo nodded slowly. She ignored the growing grin on Yang’s face as she followed the conversation from right next to her.

“If you ever find that you need some help, or just someone to talk to, feel free to come to me. I’m sure all the team leaders could do a lot more if we all worked together,” the Schnee-bint said.

Neo nodded and gave a happy, accepting smile. That seemed to please the Schnee girl and it had Yang suppressing a snort with a hand over her mouth.

At least she’d gotten someone with a sense of humour as a partner. She was going to miss Yang in about an hour. She would have to break out the ice cream with those little bits of chocolate to get over the disappointment.

Ruby, the little speedster, was out ahead of them and already talking to one of the Bullhead pilots by the docks that hung off the side of the ravine that separated Beacon from Vale. There was a path for driven vehicles that led to the school but it was circuitous and had to slowly make its way to a spot where the ravine was smaller to bridge the gap, then circle back around towards Vale.

“What? We can’t take a Bullhead?” Red said.

The pilot she was talking to, a young man in his late twenties, gave her a condescending smile. “I’m afraid not, little Miss. Bullhead services aren’t open to students at this hour, not unless you have a teacher’s pass and a damned good reason.”

Neo’s eyes narrowed. She was not going to walk back to Vale. Neo started eyeing the pilot up and down. She could use her semblance to disguise herself as him. Come back in a few hours, drag the idiot off to some bushes, steal his clothes and the codes to the Bullhead and she could just fly out of here.

“Hey, that’s Vale over there, right?” the dork with the curly brown hair asked. She looked rather plain when not wearing her mask and crown thing.

“Yes, but you need to fly to get there. We’ll never make it there and back on foot,” Weiss said.

“Hrm,” was the only reply. Neo watched rather curiously as the girl walked to the edge of the ravine and stared down the drop for a few long seconds. “There’s a river at the bottom!” she announced as if it were the best news ever.

“Um,” Red said. “Yeah, Taylor, there’s a river.” Even the mini nerd thought that the brunette had lost her mind.

“If we could cross right over here, do you think we’d be able to call up a cab or something?”

Weiss snorted. “If we could cross right there we would be right on the edge of the commercial district, we wouldn’t need to call a cab.”

“Cool!” Turning back towards the ravine, the girl tilted her head to one side, then nodded.

“Uh, girls, I think we should all back up,” the mouse faunus said.

“Pray tell, why?” Weiss asked, but in lieu of answering the mouse faunus grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her back and away from the girl who was still standing right next to the ravine.

“Just watch.”

The girl, Taylor or whatever, stood tall, one hand reaching out towards the ravine as though saluting the crevice. “Leviathan!” she called in a voice that echoed out. Everyone was paying attention to her now, even some of the pilots and maintenance folk that were stationed around the docks.

“Leviathan, bridge this gap!”

Neo stared. She wanted to laugh, to giggle at the way the girl was acting all high and mighty. It was a good act, and it had gotten them all to pay attention to her. Neo gave her a seven out of ten for the presentation.

Then a column of water the thickness of Beacon’s largest tower shot out of the ravine and speared out into the sky.

It split apart, a hundred tendrils cutting through the sky like the arms of a parasol only to come crashing back down in a series of almost-graceful arcs.

Spears of water stabbed into the ground just in front of Taylor. The impacts were hard enough that Neo felt them through the soles of her feet.

Then the water started to move in a way that no water should. A weave formed in the air before them, long tentacles of water that knotted themselves up in a fractal pattern before the entire pillar of water froze with a snap that left a chill in the air.

Fog billowed out of the ravine, chilled, moist water that ran over the huntresses like a cascading wave.

When it cleared it was to reveal a thin bridge that arced gracefully from the edges of the Bullhead docks all the way to the lip of Vale’s wall. There were guardrails made of snowflakes bigger than Neo was tall and the surface of the structure--just wide enough for two to comfortably walk side by side--was covered in fine engravings of tiny huntresses and Grimm holding hands and gallivanting around.

And it was slippery. Just with a glance, Neo could tell that the entire thing was just a little bit wet and probably slippery enough to send anyone that stepped onto it falling all the way into Vale.

“Now we can slide all the way to Vale!” Taylor announced.

“What,” said Weiss.

***

“C’mon Weiss,” Ruby said, and if she didn’t sound so much like a kicked puppy and if Weiss had been fast enough to look away from her big, soulful eyes, then maybe the words wouldn’t have had as big of an impact.

“I refuse,” Weiss replied. She crossed her arms under her chest and half-turned away from her young, impressionable and immature partner.

“Oh, come on,” her partner’s insufferable sister said. The blonde haired young woman wrapped an arm around Weiss’ shoulder and turned her so that she was facing the... the slide.

Taylor was standing next to it, watching as Neo, Yang’s team leader, poked at the frankly absurd structure with a toe.

“You’re the team leader, you should go first,” Yang said. “You need to break the Weiss for the rest of us.” Taylor looked up and slapped a hand over her mouth to stop a laugh. Ruby, on the other hand, had no such restraint and giggled from somewhere behind Weiss. “Did you guys Schnee what I did there?” Yang asked.

Weiss slipped out of Yang’s grasp and turned to glare at the girls gathered behind her. Ruby didn’t even have the good grace to look chastised as she fell under the heiress’ killer glare. Mouse Protector just tilted her head to one side, her helmet’s ears making it obvious that she, at least, was listening. “I-- I won’t accept such disrespect,” Weiss declared.

“Weiss so serious?” Mouse Protector asked. “Come on, Taylor’s... slide thing won’t hurt anyone, I’m sure. And we’re off hours. You can give in to the... Schneenanigans a little. Let your anxiety melt away. Look, Ruby already Rose to the occasion and Taylor tailored a brand neo bridge for us. Now we just need to slip on down to Vale, do some shopping, maybe drink a few drinks and have a bit of fun. We can deal with the Yangovers tomorrow morning.”

Weiss, heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, a young woman who had spent years being tutored in decorum and poise, a woman who prided herself on her self control, felt as though she was a shove away from strangling her teammates.

Then Ruby stepped right up to her and gave her a little shove right between the breasts.

Weiss took a step back, only to find that her foot had landed on something slippery and wet.

Her scream as she went down the slide backwards, headfirst and upside down dopplered across the ravine.


	5. Chapter 5

“Neo,” Roman Torchwick, thief extraordinaire and handsome man all around said to his favorite minion-slash-best pal. “Why are you wearing a Beacon uniform?”

Neo blinked twice at Roman. She looked down at the red plaid skirt and the mismatched brown and pink stockings she was wearing, then back up to the man who thought of himself as her boss. She shrugged.

Roman pressed his index and thumb to the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Then riddle me this; why did some blonde haired girl follow you into the Club? Junior just about had a fit when she walked in, and if it wasn’t for you being there I think he’d have sicced the twins on her already.”

Neo nodded sagely then gestured with her hands. She laid them flat against one side of her head then tilted it to one side; she shut her eyes. Then she opened them wide and pointed at the beacon ensignia on her chest twice.

“You fell asleep and woke up as a Beacon student?” he asked to confirm.

She nodded.

“And you didn’t think to text me?”

With her thumb, she mimed texting on a phone, then made a gesture as if to throw something over her shoulder. Then she shrugged.

“You lost your phone,” he said. “Right... and the girl?”

Neo’s grin was predatory. She pointed at one of Roman’s subordinates, then at him before pointing at the window that offered them a view of the dance floor. She jabbed a thumb at her chest.

“She’s your minion?” he asked, while one perfectly trimmed eyebrow climbed up his forehead. “You have a minion now?”

Neo nodded sharply. She raised three fingers.

Roman feigned sniffling. “You grew up so fast. My, I remember just yesterday I was bribing you with ice cream and now you’ve got minions of your own.” He leaned back into the sofa he occupied and let his eyes wander across the room. It was the largest VIP lounge that the Club had to offer, a sizable room with a panoramic view of the dancefloor on one side. A small private bar manned by one of his minions stood opposite from the open balcony. Roman gestured at the man behind the bar and he nodded back.

“You are, of course, going to ditch them and come back to me, right?” he asked. He would never admit it, not in a million years, but he was rather fond of Neo. She was a bit feisty and insubordinate at times, but she was a damned sight more useful than his average mook.

Neo touched her chin as if in thought, then made a ‘maybe’ gesture.

“Tsk tsk, Neo, you didn’t even give me two week’s warning before leaving to fulfill your dreams of higher education and bullying children.” He grinned at her. It was a game, of sorts, getting Neo to do what he wanted her to. She always did, in the end, but she made sure that it cost him.

Neo made a ‘whatever’ motion at him and slumped back into her own sofa. She kicked off her boots and let out a contented little sigh while wiggling her toes. Then, with an almost imperious look on her cherubic face, she leaned one foot out towards him.

“Neo, sweetheart, I will not kiss, massage or touch your feet. I have minions to do that for me.”

She looked at him with one delicate eyebrow raised, then started to rub the beacon symbol attached to her chest.

“Really? You’d go back to that place instead of working for little old me? My my, I didn’t know you would be so attached to your team so quickly.” Neo interrupted him with an unladylike snort but he just barked a laugh and continued speaking. “You know, it might not all be bad, your being in Beacon I mean.”

Reaching into his coat, Roman pulled out his Scroll, an expensive next generation model that he didn’t pay for. With a few presses of his thumb, he entered the stolen password and started to search for a particular file.

“Ah, here it is,” he murmured. “Someone, presumably a Beacon student, just used a Semblance that one of our... friends is mighty interested in. That same friend is also curious about a few new students. Usually I’d sic a mook on it, but since you’re so close to the matter already...”

Neo’s nose scrunched up in distaste but she snatched the Scroll out of the air when he tossed it her way.

One of his mooks bought him his drink and a silver bowl filled to the brim with ice cream which was deposited before Neo. She finally deigned to lower her feet from his lap to get at the dessert. Still, he saw her scrolling through the list while spooning ice cream into her mouth.

There was a definite frown on her face by the time she reached the end.

Roman had the impression that this whole night was going to cost him.

***

Ruby was excited. She hadn’t been this excited since uncle Qrow had laid out the parts that would one day become Crescent Rose on a workbench in front of her. The gift came with a promise that if she made something good enough, he’d teach her how to destroy Grimm by the hundreds.

She’d been shopping before. Heck, she’d been shopping with friends before (Yang was a friend, it counted), but she’d never gone weapons shopping with a friend before.

“Okay, so next time we have to leave earlier,” she said as she bounced ahead of her team. The hard cobbles that lined the entryway into the Beacon dorms could have been mattresses for all they did to stop her from skipping. The bags she carried, all filled with clothes they’d bought for Taylor and Catherine, bounced by her sides. “We hardly had time to look at anything, and they wouldn’t let us try them. Do you think it’s because it was late or because we all look kind of young?”

Taylor’s face scrunched up in a scowl. “I hope it was because we were late, it wouldn’t be fair to not serve us just because you’re a bit short and I’m, um,” Ruby saw her going red in the face as she stared down at her chest. “I say we go back there and try every weapon!”

Weiss made a noise that might have been agreement. She, too, was suffering from the whole ‘too short’ problem and could probably commiserate with Ruby. “I’ll be the last to discourage the growth of one of my subordi-- erm, teammates, but could we hurry a little?”

Ruby dropped one of her bags and held the doors open, allowing Taylor, Catherine and Weiss to slip into the dorm building. When she went to follow them, she was stopped by three ramrod straight backs.

“H-hello, Deputy Headmistress Goodwitch,” Weiss squeaked.

“Hello, team SPAR,” the woman said. The light of the corridors flashed across her glasses as she tilted her head back and stared from one girl to the next. “Curfew begins in a few minutes. You should be in your rooms by now, but I can hardly punish you for almost breaking the rules.” Ruby could almost feel the tension slipping out of her teammates. “On the other hand, I can ask you just where you have been.” Her attention shifted to all the bags they held, the logos of half a dozen stores emblazoned on their sides.

“Let me,” Catherine said in a low whisper that they only just caught. She took a step forward, like a brave soldier walking to her death. The rest of team SPAR watched her, encouraging her silently to fight the good fight. “I can explain, Miss Goodwitch,” she began.

Behind the stern woman, a few other students gathered, many of them already changed into their pyjamas. They all watched with the kind of attention someone would pay to a particularly violent Bullhead crash.

“Oh, please do,” the woman said.

Ruby couldn’t see it, but she could definitely hear Mouse Protector’s smile. “Well, Taylor and I didn’t exactly plan on becoming students of this fine institution. Nonetheless we were ready and willing to face whatever challenge that lay before us. Unfortunately, that meant that we weren’t entirely prepared. Instead of taxing Beacon Academy’s logistics services we decided to mount a simple operation. We exfiltrated ourselves down to Vale in order to acquire much needed materials that would allow us to continue and improve our abilities as students. I’m proud to announce that our mission was a resounding success and the necessary goods have been obtained.”

Glynda stared for a few long moments, then pressed her forefingers to her brow and adjusted her spectacles. “I see. So, four minors left the school grounds, without warning any members of the staff or obtaining permission to... buy things?”

“Your assessment is faulty,” Mouse Protector said.

Where there had been murmurs, whispers, and stifled giggles, there was now a hush in the hall.

“Oh?” the deputy headmistress managed to speak entire volumes with that one word. Sentences that said ‘are you certain?’ and ‘do you know how long can I keep you in detention?’

“Indeed. Your assumptions are mistaken for two reasons,” Catherine said, and the silence deepened with held breath. “We left with two members of team Bunnys, and the group consisted of five minors and one person above the age of adulthood.”

“Above the age...” Glynda’s voice petered out, but still managed to sound severe. “I do not appreciate children trying to get away with things, Miss Protector. I also do not tolerate any escape of my watch to do goodness knows what in Vale.”

“How old are you, Miss Goodwitch?” Mouse Protector asked.

A gasp sounded out in the corridor.

Ruby’s eyes flicked from the two feuding women to the group at the other end of the corridor. It had grown substantially and more than one of them had their Scrolls out and were filming.

“I don’t see how my age is any concern of yours, young lady,” the deputy said. She brought her crop around and smacked it into her free hand. The sound was like a gunshot in the tight passageway.

“Humour me,” Mouse Protector said.

Ruby noticed that Weiss had gone very, very white and that Taylor was sporting a manic grin that she’d only ever seen on a very drunk Uncle Qrow. She herself felt rather faint.

“I am thirty-five years old,” Goodwitch said.

“Huh, you’re two years my junior,” Mouse Protector replied. “You look a little older. It must be the stress. It gives you wrinkles, I hear.”

The two women stared at one another.

No one made a sound and Ruby noticed that she wasn’t the only one trembling in her boots. There was an oppressive weight to the air as if both women were moments away from going at each other’s throats.

“As a Beacon student you are still expected to hold to the same standards as other students, regardless of your age. Also; Detention. I suspect that team SPAR will be able to explain exactly how Beacon acquired a new... edifice.”

“Hrm,” Mouse Protector said as she calmly walked past the Headmistress. She paused when she was right next to the woman. “So, did you want me to serve my detention alone with you? I’m sure we could get to know each other better. I always found severe women like you to be... hot.” There was so much meaning in the last word that Ruby almost fell flat on her face as all her blood rushed to her face.

Glynda looked like she was going a little red in the face too, especially when Mouse Protector winked at her and walked on. “You know where my room is, Glynda. If you want to play teacher, feel free to visit.”

Ruby could swear that the leather grinding in the Professor’s hand could be heard two buildings over. She fixed them all with a look that promised wrath if they were not in their dorm rooms post-haste. They all took the hint and moved to follow their brazen classmate. Who was also a grown woman, apparently.

Ruby couldn’t help but notice that the way Catherine walked down the rest of the corridor. Most of the boys and some of the girls shifted their attention down to her hips.

“Holy cow,” Taylor said quietly.

“I don’t know whether to be very angry, terrified, or impressed,” Weiss replied in a tone that was far breathier than usual. More than once, her head started to turn as if to look behind them, but she would stop herself. Ruby had no more desire to look back than she did. Detention was going to royally suck. And probably last all semester at this rate.

Ruby knew better than to speak while her face felt as warm as it did. It was unlikely to come out as anything more than a squeak.


	6. Chapter 6

Blake yawned expansively and stretched. It might have been part of her cat faunus heritage, but there was something infinitely pleasurable about arching her back and spreading her arms wide until they felt like they were going to pop. She felt her jacket tightening under her bust and a breeze brushing against her belly before she finished her luxuriating stretch.

The fact that every single boy in the room suddenly went quiet for a few moments didn’t go unnoticed. It was rather flattering.

Yang’s shit eating grin from the seat next to hers was less so. “Are you... Belladone stretching?” she asked.

Some boys a row behind them snickered.

Blake sat back down and let her eyes scan across the combat training room lazily before fixing her most deadpan gaze onto Yang. “If someone hadn’t barged back into our rooms at two in the morning,” she said in a tone that was just a hair shy from a hiss, “then maybe I wouldn’t be quite so tired.”

Yang snorted, but Blake knew that she was hiding a few dark rings under those designer sunglasses of hers. Neo, who was sitting on Yang’s other side, didn’t even pretend to be awake. Her entire torso was sprawled onto her desk, one arm dangling off the side.

One part of Blake was curious to know what the two of them, not to mention team SPAR, had been up to the night before. The other part of her remembered Yang crashing into the room, smelling of cheap booze and sweat, and being half-carried by a pouting Neo.

Blake watched as another team walked into the room, stared around for a few moments, then beelined for the rows of seats that took up a good third of the classroom.

It was a clever setup, with a recessed arena taking up a large portion of the room and a dais beyond where even now, Glynda Goodwitch was standing ramrod straight. Behind the stern woman was a bank of monitors where their names would be displayed during any sparring they did.

Blake had been looking forward to this, to seeing how she stacked up against her classmates. For that matter, she wanted to see how her team would fare. Yang seemed competent, but Neo didn’t strike her as a fighter. Simurgh... Simurgh could probably handle herself.

The bell rang and Goodwitch nodded to herself. She took a firm step forwards and slapped her crop into her off hand. The noise was enough to quiet everyone in the room in a manner of seconds. “Today will be your first Combat Instruction Class. This is, doubtlessly, the single most dangerous class in the Beacon curriculum. On account of that, I expect you all to beh--”

The door to the room slammed open and in the square of darkness stood a panting Weiss Schnee, her perfect hair plastered to her forehead and her left eye twitching in a way that hinted at the possibility of first degree murder in the near future.

The young woman stomped into the room, across the teacher’s dais, and to an empty seat in the front row where she sat down.

Everyone stared at her, then at the shy form of a red-faced Ruby Rose who only endured the staring for a second before she disappeared in a wash of rose petals and reappeared next to her partner.

Goodwitch's crop looked as though it was about to snap when another girl followed Ruby’s steps and looked around at everyone before waving with a cheerful grin. Judging by the hair and lack of faunus ears, she had to be Queen Administrator out of her combat costume, if Blake had to guess. “Hi Miss Goodwitch!” the cheerful girl said as she sauntered over to a seat next to Ruby’s.

“Hey, Glynda,” another, raspier voice said. Blake’s attention snapped to the entrance where Mouse Protector, still with her helmet on over her Beacon uniform, was standing.

“Miss Protector,” Glynda said in a tone so cold it could have made ice seem warm. “Get, to, your, seat.”

“Already there,” Mouse Protector said, and between one blink and the next Blake lost sight of the woman only to find that she’s planted herself next to Queen Administrator.

The headmistress seethed for a few seconds while the class remained deathly quiet. Then, with an air of restrained professionalism, she started explaining the rules of her classroom. Blake didn’t think she had to go over the tardiness rules quite so many times, but she didn’t dare pipe up.

When Goodwitch finished what had to be a rehearsed presentation she coughed once into a closed fist, then turned a vindictive, almost violent, look upon team SPAR. “Since team SPAR so graciously volunteered to start us off, I believe I will allow them to begin,” she said.

“Can we pick who we’ll go against?” Mouse Protector asked.

Blake had the impression that the headmistress was developing a tick. “And who, exactly, do you want to fight, Miss Protector?”

“I was thinking of asking to fight you, Glynda.”

There was an interesting moment where every student in the room stopped breathing and turned to stare at the mouse-eared woman in the front row. Blake didn’t know if she was just stupid or incredibly overconfident and also stupid.

“Another faunus that doesn’t know her place,” someone muttered from a few rows back.

As soon as the words registered, Blake felt her spine stiffen.

Then Mouse Protector slowly turned around. She was baring her teeth in what might have been a grin if her eyes weren’t smoldering. “Glynda, love, I take it back, I want to fight him and his little team.”

A calculating look crossed Goodwitch’s face before she gave the woman a brittle smile. “Very well. Our first fight will be Mouse Protector versus team CRDL.”

Four boys stood up and jockeyed down to the floor. Mouse Protector waited by the entryway into the changing rooms and knocked shoulders with them as she entered herself.

Next to Blake, Yang lowered her shades and let out a low whistle. “Damn, I hope mouse-girl knows what she’s doing. I can’t say that those boys looks all that strong, but even I wouldn’t want to go four on one.”

Neo raised a hand and made a wishy-washy gesture before letting her head slump back down onto her desk. She had come awake for a few moments but seemed rather bored with every class so far.

“I don’t know. I’m hoping she at least puts the big one in his place,” Blake said. “What about you?” she asked before turning to her own partner.

Simurgh was half out of her seat, a sign held up that had odds written on it and a pile of Lien chips floating in the air next to her. She was also, Blake noticed, wearing a green sun visor and sunglasses.

Blake pinched the bridge of her nose.

Mouse Protector was the first one to step into the arena. She had a shield vaguely shaped like a mouse’s head in her off hand and rested her other hand on the hilt of her sword. She walked to her end of the arena and started jumping in place to loosen her arms and legs, which she followed up with a few squats and arm stretches. It didn’t tell Blake anything about her abilities, but did speak of her experience.

Team CRDL followed. The leader, Cardinal (going by the name on the scoreboard), had a huge mace resting on one shoulder. His teammates’ names appeared on the board in a trio of quick flashes. Sky Lark, the boy with the halberd that Blake suspected was also a rifle. Dove Bronzewing--who had narrow eyes that inspected Mouse Protector once before he scoffed--carried a longsword that he swung around a few times. The last member was the shortest and the only one not wearing any sort of armour; Russel Thrush, who was combing back his mohawk with the same hand that held one of his daggers.

Goodwitch stood on the edge of her dais, tablet in hand and focus on the group below her. “The forcefields are going up now. If, at any time I call a hold, you had better hold, am I understood?”

The five in the arena all gave their affirmatives. The professor tapped her pad, and a blue sheen rose up around the stadium.

“You’re going down, mouse girl,” Cardin said.

Mouse Protector grinned. “Aww, poor little birdy. You’re lucky I’m not a kitty cat. I don’t play with my food.”

Glynda looked thoroughly unimpressed by the banter. “You may begin... now.”

“Hey birdy, do you know how teleporters do it?” Mouse Protector asked while the four boys of team CRDL got into a rough formation with Cardin at the head.

“Shut up,” Cardin replied, using up the last of his wit for the afternoon.

Mouse Protector appeared behind Cardin, her entire body already swinging around and her sword outstretched. “Teleporters do it from behind!”

Cardin planted face-first into the arena ground, his nose plowing down with a spark of expended aura. He roared and tried to get up, but the mouse faunus used his back as a springboard and flung herself at Dove.

The boy’s sword flashed towards the lone woman only to have it parried. Blake tried to follow the blur of steel on steel but it was almost too fast for her eyes to make out. One thing was painfully clear though, Mouse Protector was the better swordswoman. And, counter to her earlier statement, she was toying with the boy. He was fast, Blake had to admit, but his face was pinched with concentration. She, on the other hand, made her blocks and strikes seem almost lazy.

Russel and Sky came at her from both sides. She pulled back, but not before ducking in between Russel’s wild blows and landing a palm on his chest that barely pushed him back. When Sky swung his halberd around, the mouse faunus jumped onto the weapon, both legs stretching out in a move that threw her across the arena towards the far wall.

“Hah!” Cardin said as he saw her sailing past. He had finally regained his feet, just in time to see her taken out of the fight.

Then she appeared behind him again, going just as fast as before, and landed both booted feet in the back of the boy’s head.

Cardin went down with a crash of steel while Mouse Protector rolled to her feet and laughed. “Oh man, you’re all low-level Brutes. I can go all out, this is great!”

“You bitch!” Sky said as he tried to spear her. She just pushed his halberd aside, then rammed her sword’s pommel into his nose.

Sky tried to grab her, but she disappeared from his grasp and reappeared in front of a charging Russel. The boy didn’t have time to react before she dropped her sword between his legs and reappeared in front of Dove, one hand clamping over the hilt of his sword.

With a quick bash of her shield to Dove’s face, she liberated him of his sword while Russel tripped behind her. “Yoink!”

Blake was... impressed. What she had said about cats playing with their food came back to mind as Mouse Protector wove and slid past increasingly erratic attempts to hit her. More than once she let the boys hit themselves while she teleported out of the way, and Cardin spent the entire match on his face. Every time he regained his feet she would appear behind him and kick the back of his armour.

The timer above the arena had almost reached its second minute when Mouse Protector finally got bored. It was apparent that she no longer found the exercise funny. Instead she started teleporting across the battlefield in a series of quick hops that had her landing blows against all of the boys from different angles, often times stealing their weapons only to use them against their allies.

Team CRDL didn’t hit the three minute mark before a sweaty but smiling Mouse Protector teleported atop Cardin and made him crash into the ground one last time.

She daintily stepped off the boy’s back, looked around at the carnage she’d made of the rest of the team, then smiled. “That was a good workout,” she declared while sheathing her recovered sword.

Blake joined in on the sporadic clapping that filled the hall while Mouse Protector gave them all an exaggerated bow. Then she appeared right back in her seat as if nothing particularly strenuous had happened.

Glynda waited for team CRDL to shuffle off to the changing rooms before addressing the class. “That was an impressive victory, Miss Protector. Good use of your Semblance, and interesting use of your adversaries’ lack of coordination.” Her praise sounded genuine. “I am particularly impressed by your repeated theft of their weapons. Can you share your reasoning with the class?”

“Ah,” Mouse Protector said. “Well, they all looked like fancy Tinkertech, that is, uh, shifty weapons, so I figure they might have a bunch of tricks hidden in them. You can’t use your tricky weapons if they’re halfway across the battlefield. Plus some folk don’t know how to fight without their fancy gadgets.”

Ruby looked pained next to Mouse Protector.

“Indeed,” Glynda said. “Your fighting style is very creative, especially your use of teleportation across the entire battlefield.”

“Teleporting has all sorts of uses,” Mouse Protector piped up. “There’s no better way to get to a three-AM booty call than just popping over, you know?”

Glynda cleared her throat and eyed the tittering students. “Your punctuality and manners could definitely use some work, but I cannot fault your fighting ability.”

“Oh, it’s not my fighting ability you need to worry about, Glynda, it’s my tongue,” she replied glibly.

Blake felt her jaw slackening a little while Yang and Neo both snorted, and Lien changed hands. She wasn’t sure what the side bet was about, but the blush crawling up Glynda’s face while she searched for something to say was spectacular.

The Headmistress coughed and looked away from the brazen mouse faunus. “Are... are there any volunteers for the next round of combat? I believe we will continue with singles for the remainder of the class,” she said.

“Oh, oh, pick me! Pick me!” came an excited voice from the far end of the room. A buxom girl on was waving her arms in the air while standing on a boy’s lap. The long-suffering look he gave her said that it was a common occurrence.

“Thank you, Miss Valkyrie,” Glynda said. She scanned the crowd and focused on the girl sitting next to Mouse Protector. “And I believe you will be fighting... Queen Administrator, from team SPAR.”

“Awesome!” both girls said at the same time. They paused, stared at each other, then grinned before racing towards the changing rooms.

Queen Administrator stopped halfway there, then turned towards the professor. “Miss! Um, Leviathan won’t fit.”

“Pardon?”

“My, uh, semblance won’t fit in the arena. He’s too tall,” she explained.

Blake leaned closer to her partner. “What is she talking about?” she whispered to Simurgh. The angel-faunus looked up from the pile of Lien she was counting and gestured at Blake’s bag. Sighing, Blake opened her bag only to find a file tucked within, which most certainly hadn’t been there that morning. She flipped it open, ignoring the first page with the TOP SECRET stamped across it until she came to an image of a huge beast standing next to Queen Administrator in a field covered in bits and pieces of something that might once have been alive. “Oh.”

“Then, Queen Administrator, I would kindly ask that you refrain from using your Semblance,” Goodwitch said.

“Coolio!” she replied a little too quickly before turning to run into the changing rooms.

The only eventful thing that happened over the next few minutes was Simurgh’s renewed attempts to get the other students to part with their Lien. Team CRDL shuffled back into the classroom with far less arrogance than they’d displayed earlier. Cardin Winchester, in particular, glared daggers at Mouse Protector, who cheekily blew a kiss at him.

Blake decided that, even though the mouse faunus was utterly without shame, she liked the woman.

Nora ran out of the changing room, a huge hammer slung over one shoulder. It must have weighted half as much as the girl herself, but she carried it easily.

Finally, Queen Administrator flounced out towards the arena, only to pause before entering.

“Is something wrong, Miss Administrator?” Glynda asked.

The girl nodded. “Yeah, uh, do you have water bottles?”

The headmistress quirked an eyebrow at that, but one of the students whistled and tossed a full bottle towards the girl who caught it with both hands. Another student offered a bottle, then Weiss pulled one out of her bag. Even Yang joined in. Soon enough, Queen Administrator had a dozen water bottles of various sizes clutched against her chest. “Thanks everyone!” she called out before stepping into the arena proper.

Once both girls were set and waiting on either end of the arena, Glynda called out, “You may begin, now.”

Nora’s hammer exploded out behind her, sending the girl rocketing across the arena with a jet of flame. The head of her hammer came around to deliver a blow that Blake didn’t doubt could turn most smaller Grimm into paste.

Queen Administrator undid the top of the water bottle.

The hammer came to a sudden and violent stop half an inch away from Administrator’s head, a small disk of water floating between the two. “Oh, that’s so cool!” Nora said.

“Thanks!” the Queen replied with a pleased smile.

Nore spun on her heel, bringing the hammer around in an arc that should have ended somewhere in the Queen’s spine. Instead it clattered against the same watery disk with a clang that had Nora bouncing back. “Oh man,” she said. “Am I gonna have to break out the big guns?”

“Go ahead,” the Queen said while unscrewing the cap off of another bottle.

Nora’s grin was feral as she ran back towards her end of the arena, spun around, and aimed her hammer towards the other girl. The weapon clicked and hummed as it transformed from an oversized mallet into a grenade launcher. “Don’t die!” she called out before pulling the trigger.

The explosion was strong enough that Blake had to shield her eyes from the blast. She blinked at the wall of smoke being funnelled up by the walls of the forcefield. “Is, is she okay?” Blake asked.

Then the smoke cleared.

“Wow! That was scary!” Queen Administrator cheered. She was standing in exactly the same place as before, only now there was a razor-thin wall of ice curving around her.

“No fair,” Nora whined. “I only brought eight rounds of high explosive.” She looked almost sad as she loaded what Blake suspected was another anti-tank round into her grenade launcher.

“I’m sorry, Nora,” Queen said. “I’m pretty sure your explosion hammer would hurt me, so Levi won’t let that happen. But I don’t want to hurt you either. Um, could I convince you to surrender?”

“Nora never surrenders!” Nora shouted as she rushed across the battlefield.

“But if you keep fighting we’ll be here until lunch time.”

Nora’s mad dash came to a sudden halt just as she was nearing the halfway point. “Drat, you’re right. We’re at a stalemate.”

“Well, not really, I’m pretty sure I could win, but it wouldn’t be nice. How about we be friends instead?” Queen Administrator asked.

After the fight where Mouse Protector wiped the floor, Blake had been expecting... anything but this.

Glynda coughed. “Are you forfeiting, Miss Queen Administrator?”

“Not really? Can we forfeit at the same time? Is it even still a fight if we agree to become buddies?”

“You just claimed to be able to win,” the Headmistress pointed out.

“Well, yeah, the human body is 60% water,” she replied, then she flicked the ice wall that was next to her and it turned into a spray of hundreds of droplets suspended in midair by nothing at all. “I’d just need to ask Levi to make all the water in Nora’s body boil or freeze and I’d win, but I’d never do that to a friend!”

Blake felt herself blanching and saw Nora’s face doing the same. Yang gulped. “Holy shit,” she whispered under her breath.

“Please refrain from killing your classmates,” Glynda said with a hint of strained disapproval.

Queen Administrator shrugged and turned back to Nora. “What would it cost for you to surrender?”

“Hmm,” Nora said while tapping her chin and ignoring the incensed look on the headmistress’ face. “Pancakes.”

“Pancakes?”

“So many pancakes. And you need to have breakfast with us tomorrow so that we can cement our positions as bestest buddies!”

Blake heard someone sighing from the corner of the room Nora’s team was in. “Dammit Nora.”

“Deal!”

Glynda was pinching the bridge of her nose. “Queen Administrator wins by forfeit,” she said as though the words pained her to even speak.

Queen and Nora were hugging it out on the arena and laughing while they walked back towards the seats. “That team is so strange,” Blake said.

“Hey, my sister’s on that team,” Yang shot back.

“Yes, and she’s your sister, I can’t believe for a moment that she’s anything approaching normal.”

Neo made a noise that might have been a laugh from behind Yang and Simurgh reached out over Blake’s shoulder and dropped a small container on Yang’s desk. The entire team watched as Yang turned the container over and read its label. “Burn cream? Really, Simmy?”

Glynda watched Nora and Queen Administrator return to their seats, the two girls chatting amicably until they split apart, then she looked over all the students. “I believe we have time for one more bout. Any volunteers?”

“Miss Goodwitch, I want to fight,” said a calm and collected voice from the back of the class.

A young woman with a tall, toned body stood up, her mane of red hair falling over her shoulders and framing a face with a pair of piercing green eyes. Blake recognized the girl, because who wouldn’t? Pyrrha Nikos was one of the most famed arena competitors of their generation, a peerless fighter who had a ruthless streak when taking down her opponents - and who was charismatic if timid before the camera.

Hell, Blake had eaten Pumpkin Pete’s cereal with Nikos’ face staring at her from the box. She was an A-class celebrity.

“Very well, Miss Nikos, did you have someone in particular you wished to challenge?”

“Yes ma’am,” the young woman said, then her attention turned towards Blake and she felt her heart skip a beat until Nikos spoke again. “I want to challenge Simurgh.”

Blake spun around, eyes going up to her partner only to see that Simurgh was wearing a puzzled expression that slowly morphed into a far too friendly smile. She looked at Glynda and nodded once.

“Very well, you two may get changed.”

Pyrrha Nikos stepped by them and nodded to their team once before slipping into the changing rooms. Simurgh was a little slower. She floated out of her chair, then daintily stepped on the ground and started walking away, only to be stopped by Queen Administrator who barred her path. The much smaller girl pointed up at Simurgh like a mother chastising her little girl. “No disintegrations,” she said.

Simurgh rolled her eyes but nodded all the same.

“Should we be worried?” Yang asked.

Neo was nodding next to her.

It only took a minute for the two fighters to return. Pyrrha was dressed in a brown corset and red skirt that had a short cape hanging off the back of it. She held her shield close to her side and her short sword out and away from her body as she took a fighting stance on her end of the arena.

Then Simurgh flexed her knees and took to the air, floating an inch or two off the ground as she stood tall and proud, her many wings splayed out to catch the light. Her armour, if it was armour, looked like someone had torn apart a stained glass mural and stitched it back together into a form-fitting suit of platemail. Every piece of it reflected the light of the forcefield and sent little ripples of light dancing across the floor and walls.

“You may begin... now,” Glynda said.

As soon as the word was out of the professor’s mouth, Nikos was charging ahead. Her sword turned into a spear at the same moment that the girl spun around with some fancy footwork that Blake had a hard time following. She was in the air and twirling around, the tip of her spear whistling around on a direct course for Simurgh’s neck.

Simurgh ducked backwards, her entire torso bending back to avoid the spear, then she fell even farther back to move out of the way of Nikos’ follow up kick.

Pyrrha landed in a roll and came charging back, spear turning into a rifle with which she took three quick shots.

Simurgh danced. It was the only word for the way she swayed and spun, feet just barely touching the ground to push her out of the way of Nikos’ bullets.

Nikos’ rifle turned back into a sword and she stabbed forwards three times in quick succession, her blade moving at a speed that made Mouse Protector’s earlier fight look like children having a scuffle in the dirt. She spun again, putting her weight and considerable speed into a slash that would have hurt, regardless of how much aura anyone had. Simurgh stepped away, the edge of the blade whispering past her torso.

“You are good,” Nikos said as she hopped back. “I hope you don’t mind me taking you seriously?”

Simurgh made a shooing gesture, as if she didn’t mind. Nikos grinned.

The fight turned into a blur of red and white and Nikos spun, pivoted and stabbed, her sword turning into a spear mid-swing to gain some reach only to turn back into a rifle so that she could take pot-shots at Simurgh. It was incredible, watching the red-headed girl put her impressive flexibility to the test to move in ways that would have left Blake broken and at a speed that she couldn’t hope to match.

It showed just how wide the gap was between someone like Blake, who had always seen herself as more than competent, and Pyrrha Nikos, a world-renowned genius.

Perhaps scarier still was how Simurgh ducked and weaved and dodged, always by the tiniest of margins. Her smile never wavered as Nikos’ blade sang through the air. One attack passed so close to her exposed neck that she must have felt the air rush by, and when Nikos struck out with a leg she had to bend backwards out of its path.

Blake knew that Simurgh was cheating, using her telekinesis to keep herself from falling, otherwise there was no way she could pull off the moves she was making.

Her partner was, if not matching Pyrrha bloody Nikos, then at least making it so that the best fighter of their generation couldn’t touch her.

Nikos stepped back again, spear spinning around in tight arcs around her body only to come to a rest by her side. “You’re good,” she said without the tiniest hint of malice. If anything the shine in her eyes was excited, as though she wanted to find someone who was her equal in the arena. “You haven’t even tried to hit me yet,” she pointed out.

Simurgh’s grin grew and she shifted, one hand coming up and folding twice in a ‘come hither’ gesture.

“Hah!” Nikos screamed as she charged in, spear twisting around her like a whirlwind of sharp steel.

Simurgh’s grin grew feral as she spun around the blade, turned, and cocked her arm back. Then she punched.

There was a noise, like an electrical discharge paired with an explosion that had every seat in the classroom jump on the spot. It felt like a small earthquake had passed and a cloud of dust so thick that it was blinding filled the room.

Blake coughed, watery eyes trying to blink past the smokescreen while her ears rang.

She heard a voice, tinny and distant and plaintive call out. “Simmy, dust!”

A breeze flowed by, bringing in fresh air that smelled faintly of spring and that carried the dust and smoke away until she could see again.

Simurgh was standing in the middle of the arena, back and legs poised, her right arm outstretched in a classic boxer’s pose.

Her fist hovered motionless an inch away from Pyrrha Nikos’ nose, the redhead staring at it wide eyed and slack-jawed.

And behind them, nothing.

Or, not nothing, but a distinct lack of building where there should have been one.

A fifteen foot wide hole had been torn out of the side of Beacon’s combat classroom. Wires sparked where they dangled into the hole and a bit of masonry clattered to the ground as the speechless class watched. It was roughly cone-shaped; the origin, easy to find if one traced the scarred and torn floorboards back, was somewhere right behind Nikos, in the same direction that Simurgh had punched in.

And there was a trench. A deep furrow plowed through the ground leading off into the distance and off the side of the Beacon cliffs, a path scarred in mud and dirt from which little wisps of smoke still rose.

Simurgh slowly pulled her fist away from the tip of Nikos’ nose, then she blew on it.

“Dammit Simmy, I said no disintegrations!”


End file.
